CHAPTER fifty-eight #10
And the part that guts me the most?
She didn't even get to celebrate her favorite holiday properly.
Christmas.
Sam loves Christmas—the lights, the music, wrapping gifts for everyone she knows, humming carols and forcing me to drink peppermint hot chocolate.
This year though?
She spent Christmas Eve and Christmas Day hooked to IV pumps, sweating through fevers, unable to stand long enough to even reach the damn window.
My throat burns when I think about it.
But then I remember what Caroline did few days ago... and the ache bends just a little instead of breaking completely.
God, my girlfriend—the absolute light of my life—walked into this hospital room two nights ago with bags of decorations and a mission. She hung twinkling lights around the window. Put a tiny Christmas tree on the side table, covered it in pink and gold ornaments.
She draped garland over the curtain rod, placed candy canes in a mug, and even brought a playlist of soft Christmas songs.
Caroline took a sterile, humming hospital box and somehow stitched Christmas spirit into every corner of it.
Then she somehow pulled together a small Christmas Eve celebration right here in the room—her parents even came in Miami to celebrate Christmas with us and to wish Sam a full recovery.
It was the first time in days I saw my sister's smile reach her eyes.
That alone nearly broke me.
Sam shifts in her sleep and I sit up straighter, instinctively reaching out. She settles again, breathing soft and even, looking... peaceful. She looks... better. Stronger than she did days ago.
And that should be enough.
But I know what's coming next and it fucking kills me.
Once she's been fever-free for 48–72 hours, once her pain stays controlled, once the blood cultures stay negative, once her white blood cell count stops dropping...
Only then can Dr. Wilcott and her team consider whether Sam's body can withstand the assault of induction chemotherapy. And even after clearing those hurdles, she'll remain tethered to this sterile room for another month while the poison they administer does its work.
What a thing to look forward to, right?
She will have to spend weeks of isolation. Nausea. Weakness. Watching her hair fall out again. Watching her fight for her life again. And all I can do is sit here and hold her hand and pretend I'm not terrified out of my mind.
I look at Sam now, tucked into her blankets, looking so young and small in that enormous hospital bed. My beautiful, stubborn, gentle sister who's been fighting battles she never should've had to fight.
And all I can think is—please.
Please let this be the last time she has to go through this.
Because I don't know how many times a heart is supposed to survive watching someone it loves be torn apart by treatment that's meant to save them.
I'm reading, or trying to, but I can't focus.
There's a dry, rattling hum in the hospital HVAC system, and it reverberates through the floor, running up my spine, making me jumpy. The magazine in my lap is one of those outdated ones, glossy and filled with celebrity trivia.
I've been on the same page for twenty minutes, eyes scanning headlines but not absorbing a single word. Every so often, I glance over to Sam, asleep in her bed, her face turned away from me toward the window.
Only now I see her features contort—at first so subtly I would have missed it if I wasn't watching obsessively. A crease forms between her brows. Then her eyelids squeeze tighter, and her lips curl inward, as if she's biting back a scream inside her dream.
I drop the magazine. It lands on the linoleum with a soft slap.
"Angel?" I say tentatively, the syllable catching in my throat.
I stand, the slick vinyl of the visitor chair creaking beneath me, and cross the room in two steps. The light through the window is harsh, the sky outside overcast, but the hospital still feels colorless and artificial.
Sam's hands, which had been folded over the blanket, clench into fists, grabbing at the stiff material. Her breathing is uneven—sharp, shallow gasps that sound like she's suffocating.
My heart rate jumps to match hers.
I brush her hair out of her eyes—her hair is sticky with sweat, and I notice the wet patches spreading across her pillow.
She grimaces, a whimper escaping her lips, and then her eyes flutter open, clouded, unfocused.
"Sam?" I try again, voice trembling now. "Angel, hey, it's just me. Are you okay?"
She opens her mouth, but only a ragged groan comes out. She's squinting, like the light hurts, but her gaze eventually lands on me.
"Zachy," she croaks, and then her face folds into a mask of pain so total it looks like she's splitting in half.
Her hands fly to her gut, clutching so fiercely her knuckles turn white.
I barely have the presence of mind to press the nurse's call button, my thumb mashing the plastic until I feel it might snap.
At the same time, I try to soothe her, babbling nonsense, "It's okay, Sam, I'm here, you're safe, it's okay, help is coming, shhhh." My own voice sounds far away, like I'm underwater.
Sam doubles over, folding in on herself, and I try to ease her back onto the bed, but she resists, curling tight as a comma.
Then she starts to cough—deep, hacking spasms that wrack her whole body.
Each cough is punctuated by a wail, the kind she made as a kid after falling off her bike and gashing her knee open.
But this is worse.
It's a sound of pure animal pain, the kind that makes my own bones ache in sympathy.
She gags, and I'm not ready for the violent lurch of her body as vomit explodes from her mouth onto the pristine white sheets.
Shocked, I freeze for half a second, then scramble for the blue plastic basin under her bed, my hands shaking so hard I nearly drop it.
I fumble it into place just in time for the next wave.
Sam retches again and again, the force of it twisting her on the mattress.
Some of the bile lands on her chin, her hair, the collar of her hospital gown. The acidic stench fills the room, sharp and thick enough to make my own gorge rise.
I pull her hair back as best I can, using the hem of my T-shirt to wipe her mouth.
Tears carve clean lines down her cheeks, and she sobs, "Make it stop. Please, make it stop."
I can only say, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," because I can't make it stop and I can't do anything and I am useless, absolutely useless, and the call button is still flashing red and no one is coming.
Then, at last, the door bursts open.
A nurse in pale blue scrubs strides in, eyes wide with alarm, taking in the scene in an instant: the vomit, the thrashing, Sam's body arched in pain, me kneeling over her with my hands outstretched and helpless.
"It's okay, honey," she tells Sam. "Can you tell me what happened?" the nurse asks as she pulls on latex gloves so fast they snap with a gunshot crack.
"I don't know," I stammer. "She just—she woke up and started screaming. Her stomach, she says it hurts, and then she—"
"It's okay, I've got it," the nurse says, and she's already pressing her stethoscope to Sam's gut, palpating gently as Sam whimpers and recoils. "Where's your pain, honey? Show me."
"Stomach," Sam gasps, her hands fluttering like dying birds over her abdomen. "Hurts so bad—feels like it's tearing—" Her voice dissolves into another retch, and the nurse barely gets the basin in place before more vomit comes.
I back away, stumbling over the magazine on the floor, because now there are more people flooding the room: another nurse, a tech with a rolling cart, and finally, Dr. Wilcott herself, her white coat fluttering like a cape behind her.
She looks at me briefly, nodding, but her focus is all on Sam.
"What's the status?" she demands, snapping on gloves.
"Acute abdominal pain, active vomiting, tachycardic. Vitals are spiking—heart rate 142, temp 39.3, BP trending down."
Dr. Wilcott leans in, peering into Sam's eyes with a little light, then sweeping her hands over Sam's belly. "Where does it hurt most?"
Sam can barely reply, her teeth chattering through the agony.
"Everywhere. Right here—" She points below her ribs, then cramps into a ball. Sweat beads on her entire face, and she looks grayish, lips tinged slightly blue.
Dr. Wilcott's face hardens. "We need pain control now." She looks up. "Hang one liter of fluids, start with IV pain control—low dose. Draw labs for CBC, CMP, CRP, and lactate. Prep for CT."
"CT with contrast?" the nurse asks.
"Yes. Stat."
People move fast after that. Too fast. They're stripping the soiled gown, replacing sheets, starting another IV line.
I cling to the wall, watching as the nurses swarm around Sam, one inserting a new line, another stripping off her soiled gown and wrapping her in fresh blankets.
All the while, Sam is moaning, eyes rolling, sobbing incoherently. I want to help but know I'll only be in the way. I feel my hands clench so hard my nails dig crescents into my palms.
I look at Dr. Wilcott, desperate, voice barely above a whisper: "What's happening to her? I thought she was getting better, you said—"
"It's likely bowel inflammation flaring again from the typhlitis," she says carefully. "but we need imaging to rule out perforation or obstruction. The next hour is critical, Zach. I promise, we're doing everything we can."
Sam is crying out, pleading with every breath, "Please, please, it hurts, I can't—"
The nurse pushes the pain meds through her IV, and Sam sags, her cries fading to whimpers, but her eyes are still wild, searching for me. I inch closer, close enough to touch her ankle beneath the blanket. Her leg is trembling.
They wheel her bed toward the door, prepping to take her to imaging. I hover uselessly, not sure if I'm supposed to go with them or get out of the way. Sam's face is even paler now, lips drained of every ounce of color, but her fingers—God, those small trembling fingers—reach for mine.
And I grab on instantly. I hold her like she's the only solid thing in the room.